A Cat­e­go­ry 4 Trop­i­cal Cyclone Deb­bie hit north-east Aus­tralia inun­dat­ing coastal and island resort areas last week.

The severe weath­er sys­tem, the worst since 2011, made land­fall between Bowen and Air­lie Beach on March 28 and has dam­aged many build­ings, destroyed mil­lions of dol­lars in crops, hit vital infra­struc­ture, dumped lots of rain and caused flash flooding.

Radio ama­teurs expe­ri­enced in deal­ing with cyclones pre­pared by check­ing their radio gear, dis­man­tling frag­ile anten­na sys­tems, run­ning emer­gency pow­er gen­er­a­tors and doing checks on the local repeaters in Bowen, Mack­ay, Cen­tral High­lands and Townsville regions.

Those radio ama­teurs that still had HF anten­nas checked into the 20m and 40m Queens­land WICEN Nets, and oth­er estab­lished nets.

On Mon­day March 27 final prepa­ra­tions were com­plet­ed with the cyclone track con­firmed and counter-dis­as­ter author­i­ties (includ­ing some embed­ded Hams) at the ready for pre-deployment.

One of the affect­ed towns, Bowen, had its VHF repeater on-air through­out despite lack of mains pow­er in the town, thanks to the Bowen Radio Ama­teur Group and in par­tic­u­lar Geoff Buchanan VK4JDW who had the repeater at his house.

That anten­na sys­tem sur­vived 200kph winds and the repeater was pow­ered by the house­hold emer­gency generator.

Fur­ther inland the Cen­tral High­lands Linked Repeater Sys­tem was func­tion­al how­ev­er its north­ern coastal node, the Midge Point Repeater, went off-line due to pow­er sys­tem and struc­tur­al damage.

Hams have been part of the recov­ery efforts with many embed­ded in the Queens­land State Emer­gency Ser­vice, Queens­land Rur­al Fire Brigade, care organ­i­sa­tions and sup­port teams for pow­er companies.

Through­out the area many radio ama­teurs still used emer­gency pow­er to put sta­tions on-air, and some had been blocked off by road dam­age or floodwater.

Many hous­es in the Queens­land flood prone areas are built on stilts to avoid ris­ing water. As the flood con­tin­ues to move south the down­grad­ed storm has left plen­ty of dam­age before reach­ing north­ern New South Wales to cause even more damage.

The slow mov­ing flood on the Fitzroy Riv­er will reach its peak lat­er this week.

This report comes from infor­ma­tion sup­plied by The Townsville Ama­teur Radio Club and WICEN Queens­land North­ern Region by Gavin Reibelt VK4ZZ.

- Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.